E J Pederson

E.J. "Jere" Pederson is a co-founder, General Partner, and Managing Director of CitareTx Investment Partners, a Houston-area venture development, investment, and start-up management firm focused on new medical devices and health technology. He founded the firm in 2008 together with Jeffery J. Sheldon, and the two run both the fund (CitareTx Investment Partners I, LP) and its management/incubator company (CitareTx Management, LLC).

Before turning to venture investing, Pederson spent 19 years as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, a major academic medical center, retiring from that role in 2006. During his career he also managed the Investment Committee of the Texas Tomorrow Fund (the state's prepaid college tuition fund) for roughly a decade, giving him deep institutional investment-management experience alongside his healthcare-operations background. He is a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Pederson pairs his CitareTx work with extensive board service. He has served as a director of NASDAQ-listed National Western Life Insurance Company (including its Audit and Compensation Committees), and on the boards of The Sealy & Smith Foundation, the Boys and Girls Club of Galveston, and the Trinity University National Alumni Board. He also serves as Chairman of Yguana Entertainment. Within CitareTx's portfolio he sits on the boards of the firm's operating companies, including Houston Medical Robotics, EMIT Corporation, and Coagulex.

His CitareTx co-founder and counterpart, Jeffery Sheldon, brings the device-commercialization track record to the partnership — Sheldon previously founded IDev Technologies, which raised roughly $110M in private equity/venture capital and was acquired by Abbott Laboratories for about $310M in 2013. Together their model blends seed capital with hands-on operating involvement (the firm acts as an incubator, with the partners taking executive/board roles in portfolio companies).

• Invests almost exclusively in early-stage medical devices and health technology, concentrating on companies that "change the clinical paradigms and outcomes."
• Favors Class II devices using the FDA 510(k) pathway, where a faster, lower-cost regulatory route reduces risk and accelerates a defined exit.
• Writes seed checks of roughly $0.5M–$2.0M, with selective follow-on investments kept under ~$5.0M.
• Targets sectors including cardiovascular, interventional cardiology/radiology, cardiac and vascular surgery, critical care, consumables, and orthopedics — while remaining open to other device markets.
• Looks for opportunities with strategic-partner alignment and defined exit milestones (the firm's pattern is to build companies toward acquisition by larger medical-device players).
• Operates as a venture-development incubator, not a passive check-writer: the partners often take board seats or executive roles and provide operating support in addition to capital.
• Geographically Texas-centric, leveraging proximity to the Texas Medical Center and the Houston life-sciences ecosystem.